Of Bruises and Whores
by KnightedRogue
Summary: Following the AU of Solo's Girl. Han and Leia deal with the ramifications of the Intel life.


**Of Bruises and Whores**

**KnightedRogue**

**Warning: **Language is more than I've posted before. Honor the ratings, my dearest readers.

**Note: **I began this AU with "Solo's Girl". You do not have to read that before this. Han and Leia are married and, instead of the political garbage of the EU, both work for NRI - New Republic Intelligence.

* * *

"You're not fooling anyone."

She opened her eyes. He was inches away from her, the teasing glint in his eyes a familiar expression, and she hunched her shoulders as she exhaled, hoping he would take it in the hostile manner in which it was intended, and brought up the covers to her chin, forestalling any inspections of the bruised shoulder blade, or the cut on her cheekbone, or the burns on her right thumb and forefinger. _There are always worse things said than done._

She figured a basic verbal account of her injuries wouldn't have been enough, especially when her basic verbal account consisted of the word "fine". But he hadn't pressed it at the time, and she hadn't bothered to exposit on her injuries. She knew he would eventually find out; her husband had a very astute sense of her physical well-being – that, and an almost unnatural ability to manipulate her into removing her clothes – but she had been hoping to wait. Wait until she could at least attempt to care about his over-protectiveness.

"How much longer will you be up? I'm having trouble sleeping with the light on."

He crossed the room, moving towards the closet, unbuttoning as he walked, voice slightly muffled. "You're not sleeping."

"I'm having trouble _trying _to sleep with the light on."

"For someone who's real good at lying to people en masse, you've got a lot to learn about person-to-person fabrication of the truth."

_There are always worse things said than done._

She felt him crawl beneath the covers as his weight lowered the mattress. She could feel his eyes on her shoulder, the bruised one, but he obviously understood he was in the wrong already and didn't mention it. He fingered her hair while he palmed the light controls over the bed, then returned to his almost-casual inspection of her face.

She rolled over, away from him, and settled onto her side.

"Which one was it?"

She could hear the feigned nonchalance in the question: spoken too loudly to be truly thoughtless and with only a slight lilt at the end.

"Don't get protective."

He sighed. "Which one?"

He grew quiet and she grew uncomfortable. She switched to her stomach, her head still turned away. He hadn't moved.

Eventually he spoke up again. "Would you just answer my goddamned question?"

"So you can do what? Obsess over it all night?" _There are always worse things said than done._

"I don't obsess."

She exhaled into the covers. "Unless it's about me."

The bed shook again as he turned away from her.

His answer was so long in coming she thought he had fallen asleep. She let her weight sink into mattress, let it absorb the stress and pain from the day before, the tension from the strangled pseudo-fight with Han. Let her mind wander. Let her eyes roll back in her head –

"I have a right to obsess."

Her eyes snapped open. "_What_."

"I have a right."

She whipped her head to look at him, his back toward her. She could discern a slightly pale white line crossing both his shoulder blades – the result of an old knife fight, she'd discovered a few years before – and the patch of blistered skin on his left side, his only injury from the fiasco of the day before. "If this is some male territory-possessive, egotistical, chauvinistic line of thinking – "

"Come on." He flopped onto his stomach as well, head turning toward her. "I've never done that. Not with you."

His eyes had a hint of the defensive anger she knew all too well, but the quirk of his mouth made it obvious that he was thinking along another set of lines. She could imagine what was going through his mind, the scenario replaying over and over again, searching, hunting for that moment _when_ and the man _who_. He'd have had to be larger than she was to incur the bruise, had to have been armed to get her cheekbone – a laser knife, by the look of the cut – and the burns came from –

She saw him get it.

"Brown cap. Latecomer. The human near the exit."

She rolled her eyes again.

"Burns're from the pressure cooker. And the knife he had – " he reached a thumb over to caress her cut cheek. "You didn't hit the ground though."

_There are always worse things said than done. _"I hit the table with an elbow. He pushed the shoulder down."

"Ah." He nodded as he snaked an arm around her waist and pulled her closer to him. "Any others you'd like to share?"

She closed her eyes as he kissed the bruised shoulder blade. "That depends. Do they get the same treatment?"

His arm still wrapped around her waist, he brought his mouth close to her ear. "Possibly." He kissed her neck, the line of her jaw. "If you tell me what he said to you."

She stiffened. _There are always worse things said than done._

"You know, you don't faze easily." He nestled his face into her hair and his words came out muffled. "So when we end an op and you look like you did, I can guess what happened."

She hunched her shoulders a bit, uncomfortable with his astuteness and unnerved that she could be read so easily. "He didn't say anything different than anyone else."

"The normal shit is bad enough."

She forced a laugh. "Mmm. But amusing. I didn't know there were so many ways to call someone a whore."

He pulled his head from her hair and pressed his forehead to her temple as she closed her eyes. "I don't think that's amusing, Sweetheart." He paused. "And I know _you_ don't."

"But to the rest of the galaxy, it's hilarious." She pulled her head back. "There are always worse things said than done. If I could make a law – one galactic law not subjected to any planetary code of ethics or judicial system, but completely applicable to every system of the Republic – I think I'd force everyone to shut the hell up."

Han laughed. "It'd just turn into one galactic barroom brawl." He twisted to his back, watching his blistered side and laying her head on his chest. "When they can't throw insults anymore, they'll start throwing punches."

Leia sighed. "That's the very nature of politics, though, isn't it?"

He ran his arm over her back, tracing reassuring circles. "You're not a politician. You never really were."

"Right. Now I'm an Intel whore."

His voice was quiet. "No." She looked up at him. "No one's told you that. They've said you're _my _whore."

"Same thing." _There are always worse things said than done._

He shook his head but didn't speak. She knew she was incorrect in her last statement, that prostituting herself out for her fledgling government was not the same as prostituting herself to a Corellian ex-smuggler. One was viewed as honorable, the other despicable. The irony of it dropped to her stomach, a leaden weight.

Amazing how so much of her life nowadays could be twisted around by mere semantics.

"Here's what I think." She sat up enough to look at her husband's face. "I think I would much rather be a whore for the NRI than the Senate. At least out here, I can throw my punches. I'm sick of the insults."

"And what about me?"

She dropped her face close to his, kissed him sweetly on the lips. "Being your whore has been my number one priority for about five years now."

_There are always worse things said than done._

She sighed as she laid back down, fought for sleep in the usually-comforting sphere of her husband's arms.

_There are always worse things said than done._

_The trick is to find both the truth and the lie in them.

* * *

_

And the author bites her nails nervously . . . what nails she has, because she bites them nervously all the time anyway . . .

KR


End file.
